Beatboxing, Mashups, and Cyborg Identity

Abstract

This article discusses two new artistic musical traditions, beat-boxing and mashups, in terms of their communal, changeable forms as displaying hallmarks often associated with folk music. Investigating the relationship between aesthetic choices and identity concerns highlights the central theme of the man-and-the-machine, the cyborg, and the inter-connected cognitive functioning of man and machine—all increasingly a part of reality at the beginning of the 21st century.

Rethinking the contributions of young people with learning disabilities to iPad storymaking: a new model of distributed authorship

“…Here, Matthew's contributions might be seen as having parallels with the dragon drawing, which was incorporated into Satchwell's (2019) story: Matthew presumably did not intend his embodied responses to the castle visit to constitute contributions to an iPad story. This problematises the nature of the relationship between intentionality and authorship and echoes the complexity of establishing originality and authorship in the case of digital mashups (Thompson, 2011). It also relates to the ethical conundrum of attributing authorship to non‐intentional story contributions, as discussed previously.…”

“…Thompson (2011) discusses the phenomenon of the mashup , ‘a combination of two or more digital songs, videos, or images that are mixed together in new ways … commonly used for political commentary, humor, and critique’ (pp.179–180). This causes ‘great headaches’ for the copyright industry (Thompson, 2011, p.181) by challenging conventionally understood notions of originality and authorship. Such mashups might be described as simultaneously interpersonally and technologically distributed authorship since they depend upon multiple human contributors, the affordances of video editing software and the distribution capabilities of social media.…”

“…This produces interesting questions of copyright and ownership in terms of ‘distributed authorship’, which is characteristic of websites such as Wikipedia where multiple contributors may amend or add to previous entries (Kennedy, 2016). Thompson (2011) discusses the phenomenon of the mashup , ‘a combination of two or more digital songs, videos, or images that are mixed together in new ways … commonly used for political commentary, humor, and critique’ (pp.179–180). This causes ‘great headaches’ for the copyright industry (Thompson, 2011, p.181) by challenging conventionally understood notions of originality and authorship.…”